


Ghosts of a Future Lost

by messageredacted



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Dark Knight (2008)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-14
Updated: 2012-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-29 12:59:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/messageredacted/pseuds/messageredacted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wayne Manor has been rebuilt, but things just aren’t the same as they used to be. Something is stirring old memories, and not just Bruce’s…</p><p>Story contains dubcon in the form of possessed!sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Призраки неслучившегося прошлого](https://archiveofourown.org/works/780946) by [Melissa_Badger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melissa_Badger/pseuds/Melissa_Badger)



> Originally written on 18 January 2010.

When the party is over, the house is emptier than it used to be, settling down with unfamiliar creaks and groans. Bruce stands at the top of the stairs, his hand on the railing, listening. The hired kitchen staff is cleaning up downstairs, washing dishes in the kitchen and taking out bags of trash. Once in a while someone will say something, but the voices are quiet and it only highlights how massive and silent the manor is.

“Another brilliant party, Master Bruce,” Alfred says from the doorway, looking out on Bruce with a small, quiet smile. Bruce drums his fingers on the polished wood railing once, then lets his hand drop to his side.

“I thought they’d never leave.” he says, loosening his tie. He rolls his shoulders, trying to release the tension in them. “I don’t have to do another one of those soon, do I?”

“You’ll be pleased to hear that New Year’s just happens once a year, sir,” Alfred says wryly.

“That’s not the sunrise, is it?” Bruce squints down the staircase to the front windows, where the sky has a faint pre-dawn look to it.

“Not for another hour. If you don’t require anything else, I think I might retire.”

“Go, go.” Bruce waves him away and turns towards the hallway leading to his own bedroom, listening to Alfred descend the stairs behind him.

It’s a surreal feeling, Bruce muses to himself as he heads down the hallway. The house is nearly an exact duplicate to the one he grew up in. He had tracked down the original plans and records of the various renovations the house had had over the years and had tried to build it back exactly as it had been on the day it burned to the ground, with a few small improvements. The resemblance is uncanny, which might actually be what the problem is. If the house were appreciably different from what he remembered, maybe he wouldn’t keep getting struck by the incredible wrongness of everything once in a while. It is so close to what he remembers that the differences make it grotesque.

Bruce flicks on the lights in his bedroom and steps inside, shutting the door behind himself. Alfred has already been in here, turning down the bed sheets and laying out Bruce’s nightclothes. There is a glass of water on the bedside table. The curtains are drawn and Bruce can almost feel the night pressing against the other side of the curtains like a tangible force.

Bruce shrugs off his suit jacket and then begins to unbutton his shirt, letting out a sigh. The party had gone on long, as Bruce’s parties all tend to do, and his ears are still ringing from the jazz band and the singing and the drunken revelry. There had been a sultry young woman named Serena or Selina or something who had wanted to stay a little longer but Bruce had politely turned her down. Perhaps another night, when he didn’t feel like a stranger in his own home.

He steps out of his clothes and pulls on the pajamas, then crawls into bed, turning out the lamp. His eyes burn when he closes them.

Something sighs next to him and Bruce’s eyes snap open. He reaches out for the lamp and misjudges the distance, bumping the lamp and sending it over the edge of the table. Swearing, Bruce gets out of bed and finds the lamp, turning it on. It still works, illuminating his empty bed. The noise must have just been air coming from the heater, gusting over the headboard of the bed. In never used to do that, but this is all new furniture bought at estate sales and auctions and it doesn’t quite fit right in the house. Then again, neither does Bruce.

##

Bruce feels as if he is slowly being replaced, a piece at a time, with a total stranger. He’s not sure when it started, and he doesn’t quite think that it’s complete yet, but he can’t seem to halt the forward motion.

Two years ago, he would have said that Batman was a suit that Bruce Wayne wore. He would have said that he was fundamentally the same person who had fled Gotham for Bhutan. He was the same man who had lost his parents and who had lived in this house. He was the same man who had loved Rachel and who had wanted to retire.

Rachel told him that Bruce Wayne was the mask, and Batman was the real man, so perhaps at some point that had become the case. He wasn’t sure when the switch happened, or if there had been a switch at all. Maybe he was still the same person underneath, just using his name to get what he wanted. Bruce the person was still the same guy, but Bruce the persona was going through a carefully conceived set of motions to make sure that everyone saw what he wanted them to see. Batman was just the place where he could be himself, since no one knew who he was.

But there was still him, underneath. He had had thoughts of retirement and love and family and something outside of Batman. There had been someone there inside.

Then Rachel died. Harvey died. Gotham came to see Batman as the enemy. He had watched Batman be torn apart on the news. He no longer had a life outside of Batman, now that everyone was dead. Those people who had loved the man he was inside were gone. He lost nearly everything, and what’s left?

Now, sitting in his mansion, Bruce feels as if parts of himself are being replaced with something foreign. There was the part of him who had wanted a family. Now it has been replaced by a cold calculation of what he wants other people to see, making a show of the feeing for the sake of his audience but never actually caring. There was the spot of him that had wanted to have children. It has been replaced with a chip of ice, emotionless. Half of him is gone and he hasn’t even noticed it because the part of him that would have cared was the first to go.

##

The room is silent when Bruce opens his eyes. There is a marginally lighter feeling behind the curtains as if the sun is struggling to rise but hasn’t quite made it yet. He is pretty sure a noise woke him, but he can’t remember what it was. It might have been a cry.

Bruce rolls out of bed and rubs his hands over his face. He feels the strange tiredness that he always feels when he hasn’t quite gotten enough sleep, awake but empty. It is hard to say what time it is. He get to his feet and goes to the door of the bedroom, pushing it open.

The halls are dark, just this side of dawn, and there is a peculiar silence to the air, completely devoid of sound. Bruce reaches the top of the stairs and looks down them. The foyer has been reset to its normal spotlessness, no more streamers or napkins or abandoned cocktails around the room. Others might have called the party a success but Bruce is just glad that it’s over. The thought of having to socialize with that many people at once fills him with dull horror.

“Alfred?” Bruce calls, descending the stairs. He reaches the bottom, padding in bare feet across the marble. Everything has been wiped clean, streamers and champagne glasses cleared away. He must have fallen asleep for a little while, although not very long. There is still sound coming from the kitchen, where the staff must be finishing up. Bruce ventures to the doorway and looks in.

“Oh, Mr. Wayne.” One of the caterers, a young woman with short black hair, gives him an embarrassed look, in the middle of picking up pieces of glass from the floor. “Did we wake you?”

Bruce shakes his head wordlessly, although it’s probably obvious that they did, as he’s in his pajamas and his hair is tousled from sleep. He looks into the kitchen, where the staff are all glancing towards him. It looks like a vase or something has smashed on the tile.

“We just had a little accident,” the woman says sheepishly. “We’re cleaning it up. Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine,” Bruce says. The bright light of the room feels surreal, as if the kitchen is somewhere far distant from him.

“Is there something you need?” the woman asks him, pausing with the handle of a pitcher in her hand. It’s obviously a gentle nudge to get him to leave, and he takes it for what it is.

“No, I’m fine,” he says, stepping back into the hallway. “I was just wondering what that noise was.”

“Yeah, we’re really sorry,” the woman says. She’s blushing, but he can’t tell whether it’s embarrassment or attraction. He gives her a disarming smile and her blush deepens.

“Good night,” he says, starting to turn away. She smiles and then jerks her hand up towards her own face, so quickly that at first he thinks she’s swatting at a bug.

Then the blood comes gushing out and her whole body slumps forward, the long piece of glass sticking out of her eye socket. It is so shocking and sudden that for a moment Bruce just stares blankly, unable to react. It isn’t until the other kitchen staff begin to recoil in horror that he realizes that this isn’t a dream, and the woman is dead.


	2. Chapter 2

“It was a suicide,” Alfred says, standing in the doorway of the bedroom with a cup of tea.

Bruce sits on the edge of his bed, still watching the police cars slip away down the front driveway. The ambulance with the body has just left.

“Why would she do that?” Bruce asks, frowning out the window. He turns his head to Alfred, who gives a small shrug and then puts the cup of tea down on the bedside table.

“I don’t think we’ll ever know.”

“She was just talking to me. She was embarrassed, but there was nothing—she didn’t say anything that would—” Bruce shakes his head incredulously. His hands are numb with the cold that seems to be leaching into the room from the window. He picks up the teacup and holds it between both hands. He’s not grieving, he doesn’t think. He didn’t even know the woman. It’s just strange.

“Everyone saw the same thing,” Alfred says quietly. “It wasn’t an accident and it wasn’t murder.”

Bruce has nothing to say to that because it’s true. There is no other explanation but suicide. It just feels wrong. She was smiling at him. Was it something he’d said? Was she so humiliated with the thought of waking him up that she couldn’t bear to live anymore? How was that possible?

“Go to bed, Master Bruce,” Alfred says, giving him a sympathetic look. “You haven’t had any sleep.”

“Neither have you,” Bruce points out.

“I’ll take a nap if you will,” Alfred says. Bruce sighs and gives him a smile.

“Blackmail me, why don’t you?” he said. “Fine. And I don’t want you sneaking around doing work while I’m sleeping.”

“You have my word.” Alfred returns his smile and then retreats from the room.

##

Bruce wakes up with his pajamas sticky. He hasn’t had a wet dream in a long time. He can’t quite remember the dreams he was having, although when he closes his eyes he catches snatches of memory, green eyes and tangled hair.

He stumbles out of bed and heads straight into the bathroom to shower. It’s painful to leave his warm bed but the shower has hot water and maybe it will warm up his limbs, which feel as cold as if he left the window open all night.

The water is perfectly warm and he spends a good ten minutes under it before he finally drags himself out of the shower and dries himself off. His whole body is exhausted. He can’t have slept very long.

For a moment Bruce wants to go look for Alfred and find some breakfast and come up with something to do, something that will get him out of the house, but then he glances towards his bed and remembers the dreams. He has no other obligations for the day, and he hasn’t had dreams like that in a while. Another few hours of sleep wouldn’t hurt.

##

“Master Bruce.”

Bruce buries his face further into the pillow. “Mm.” The bed is warm and comfortable and he was just in the middle of a very nice dream.

There is a sigh and then someone briskly pulls open the curtains, flooding the room with thin gray light.

“It’s four in the afternoon, Master Bruce. I thought you might like to see the sun before it sets.”

Bruce opens his eyes blearily. From the way the light is falling on the wall, it looks like the day only has a half hour at most before night falls. He rubs his eyes and starts to roll onto his back, then pauses, bunching the blankets on his lap.

“Did I sleep all day?”

“Not yet, sir.”

Bruce smiles faintly. His limbs all feel heavy from too much sleep and his mouth is dry and gummed. He reaches for the water glass and then he remembers the girl in the kitchen with the glass in her eye.

“Did the police call?” Bruce asks, sitting up.

“No.” Alfred shakes his head. “There have been a number of requests for comments from reporters but I have told them you don’t wish to make a statement at this time. I trust that was the case.”

“That’s fine.” Bruce yawns and flops back on the pillow. “I’ll be downstairs in just a minute.”

Alfred gives him a look and disappears out the door. Bruce slides his hand under the covers and under the waistband of his pants. His cock jumps in his hand, achingly hard.

The dreams—he can’t quite remember them, but he knows they were vivid and powerful. He can remember the feeling behind them. They weren’t just erotic—there was something like elation in his dreams, pure ecstatic joy, and the memory of that feeling makes him ache.

He pulls his hand up his cock, trying to recapture that feeling in his head. The dreams have left him hovering on the edge and it only takes a few quick strokes before he’s bucking up into his own hand, swallowing a shout. He comes harder than he has in a long time and then lays gasping and wrung out, remembering a smiling mouth.

##

Alfred has prepared dinner in the kitchen, where Bruce prefers to eat when there aren’t any guests. The dining room is too large and echoing and he feels like a parody of a billionaire when he sits alone at that giant table. The world outside the windows of the manor is gray and washed out. The grounds are covered in a thin, melting crust of snow and the trees stretch black against the gunmetal sky.

“They’re saying there’s more snow on the way,” Bruce says as Alfred pours hot black coffee into a china cup. The day’s newspaper is spread out on the table.

“It’s about once a week now,” Alfred grumbled. “I think we’ve had enough of it.”

“It’s January first,” Bruce said with a short laugh. “I don’t think it’s over yet.”

Alfred sets the cup of coffee next to Bruce’s elbow along with a pitcher of cream and a jar of sugar. Bruce stirs in the cream and sugar, flipping through the paper for anything that jumps out at him that Batman needs to look into, but there doesn’t seem to be anything. The death of the kitchen staff happened too late in the evening to be in the newspaper, but he imagines that the television stations are chatting about it. He doesn’t really want to hear them.

“Prepare something nice to tell the reporters, would you?” Bruce asks, glancing over at Alfred. “Something like ‘it was a tragedy and we send our prayers out to her family’ or something like that. What was her name again?”

“Emily Baker,” Alfred says. “I will do that.”

Bruce looks over his shoulder at the spot on the floor where the girl died. It has been cleaned to within an inch of its life by now. The police were quite thorough with their photographing and collecting evidence, although the officer on duty told Bruce that it was unlikely that anything would come of it. Sixteen people had watched her do it to herself, with no one within touching distance of her. There was no crime, really,

She had smiled at him and then she had killed herself. Bruce rubs his hand through his hair, suddenly tired.

“You know, I’m not feeling so great,” he said. “I think I might head back to bed.”

##

The bedpost is slamming the wall. Bruce fists his hands in the sheets, his knees digging into the bed. Thighs are wrapped around his hips and the woman underneath him is making noises, lifting her hips to meet him. He buries his face in her hair and slams into her, so close.

She shudders around him, letting out soft cries and holding him tightly. Her breathy moans turn into giggles and then he laughs and says “Why, Bruce—”

Bruce jolts awake, sucking in air. His pajamas are ruined again and the room is dark and all be can see in front of his eyes is green hair and white paint. He was—that was—

He rolls out of bed and runs for the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before he throws up. That was _not_ a good dream. That was a _sick joke_.

He climbs into the shower and washes off again, trying to wake up fully. He turns the water temperature to cold and shudders under the chill, feeling goosebumps rise on his flesh. He gets out from under the water as quickly as he can and wraps himself in towels, stepping out into his bedroom to find clean pajamas.

The clock on the bedside table says it is three in the morning. Could he really have slept that long? He couldn’t have gone to bed much later than five p.m., and that was after sleeping the whole day. Maybe the woman’s death hit him harder than he thought. Maybe he really is getting sick.

He dresses in clean pajamas and then sits down on the edge of the bed, looking around the room. In the dim light coming from the bathroom, everything looks almost but not quite right, like all the furniture in the room are throwing shadows that don’t quite match their shape. It sends a sudden shudder of disgust through him. He rubs at the goosebumps on his arms.

The dream about the—about _that man_ was nothing. The dreams he has been having up to that point have been about a woman, he’s pretty sure. In any case, he has never had any attraction to the Joker and he doesn’t see what might have changed. It was just his subconscious playing a cruel trick on him. Maybe thoughts of Rachel and Harvey brought that memory up.

Now that he’s awake, the horror of the dream is receding. He’s exhausted. His head hurts. In the morning, he’ll definitely plan to get out of the house. He’ll get up early and go for a run, get his blood pumping. Maybe he’ll take Selina up on her offer and take her out to dinner somewhere, maybe Paris, and spend a few days with a complete change of scenery. That should stop this unhealthy moping around the new house, and although the idea fills him with crippling boredom at the moment, maybe he’ll enjoy it once he gets out of here.

##

“Are you feeling any better, sir?”

Bruce opens gummy eyes and stares at the ceiling. His headache is still there, throbbing behind his eyes. There is daylight on the ceiling. Ah, morning.

“Not really,” he mumbles. Alfred sets a cup of coffee on the bedside table.

“Perhaps this will help,” he says. “The caffeine will make you feel better.”

Bruce reaches for it and then freezes when he sees the time on the clock. “That’s not the right time, is it?”

“It’s two in the afternoon,” Alfred says with a nod.

Bruce gapes at the clock, unable to comprehend it. “I slept for _twenty-one hours_?”

Alfred says nothing, pulling the curtains open. Bruce sits up, taking the coffee in between his hands to warm them. The warmth trickles down his throat when he drinks.

“I think I’ll go for a run,” he says, draining the cup. “Don’t bother with a meal for me. I’m not hungry.”

##

The run does him some good. His head feels better, although his lungs hurt from the cold air. The winding roads in the Palisades have no sidewalks and look out on both sides onto long expanses of snow-covered grass and picturesque stands of trees and discrete privacy walls. Bruce used to run this route daily when he was in high school and he finds himself falling into the same rhythm as he runs.

The problem is that he’s stuck in a rut. With Batman a fugitive from the law, he’s been holding out for serious crimes before he makes his appearance. Gordon has been doing a good job of keeping the mob reeling after the double punch of Falcone and Maroni, so there isn’t too much to do on the mob front. There haven’t been any other terrorists, because apparently the mob learned their lesson about hiring people they don’t know. Sure, there is a power vacuum and someone is going to step in to fill it eventually, but at the moment it’s all quiet.

The roads are chalky white with road salt where they’re not gleaming black from snow melt. Only one car passes Bruce on his run. He makes a slow loop around the neighborhood before coming back again towards his home.

As he comes up the driveway, he can see the old familiar silhouette of the house, although everything is shiny and new. There is no ivy climbing the walls of the house yet and a few of the trees that had been close to the house are either damaged or missing entirely, but it’s like the same house.

He feels a surge of nostalgia before he remembers that this is not the house he grew up in. The ugly thought dashes his good mood. This house is a clever imposter. The house from his memories is dead and buried.

He jogs up the front steps and down them again, then circles around to the servant’s entrance by the kitchen, where he comes into the house, shaking clumped snow off his shoes. As soon as he steps into the warmth of the kitchen, he feels a rush of excitement, remembering his dreams. He’s been awake nearly three hours now. Surely that’s enough time? Can’t he go to bed now?

“How was the run?” Alfred asks, coming into the kitchen from the direction of the servant’s quarters.

“It was great,” Bruce says, grabbing a glass from the cupboard and filling a glass of water at the sink.

“I’m sending flowers to the funeral home for the funeral of Ms. Baker. Would you like to handwrite a note or shall I take care of it?”

Bruce drinks the glass down in three gulps and then glances distractedly at the paper in Alfred’s hand. “Could you take care of it?”

“Certainly.”

“I’m going to go take a shower,” Bruce says. “I’ll, uh, see you later.”

Alfred retreats to his office and Bruce climbs the stairs, already thinking of his dreams.

##

His lips trail over her closed eyelids, feeling the trembling of her eyelashes. She slides her hands up behind his head and pulls him down for a kiss, hungry.

“Love you,” Bruce murmurs, and he honestly, truly means it. He would give his life for her. He can feel the love with every part of himself. He can’t imagine being with anything other than her.

“You too,” she whispers, laughter in her voice. He kisses her mouth and then moves down her cheek, his lips tracing over bumpy scars. He pulls back, keeping his eyes closed.

 _No, not scars. Smooth skin._

He leans in again and the skin is smooth. Her hands are grasping at his shoulders, pulling him against her. He kisses her chin and tastes—no, not that either. No paint. Just skin.

He nudges her thighs apart. She hooks an ankle around behind his knee and pushes up against him, and he feels her erect—

Bruce blinks up at the dark ceiling. Okay, this isn’t working. There is no reason why his subconscious needs to keep torturing him like this.

There is a gentle knock on his door.

“Come in,” Bruce calls. Alfred slips into the room.

“Will you be having supper?”

Bruce braces himself up on his elbows. He isn’t hungry. He has a headache and honestly, even after all this sleep, all he wants to do is close his eyes.

“No,” he says, making himself sit up. “I think I have to make a few phone calls. I’ll let you know if I get hungry.”

“Absolutely.” Alfred retreats. Bruce gets out of bed.

He is sick and tired of this. He hasn’t had a dream all night that hasn’t included the man in some way.

He isn’t going to be able to sleep, really sleep, until he gets the Joker out of his head. He doesn’t know how the man managed to get in there, but Bruce is pretty sure that the only way to get him out is to confront him face-to-face and remind himself about how much he truly hates the man.

He’s going to Arkham.

##

It’s not as simple as that, actually. He has to make a few phone calls and pull a few strings. Bruce Wayne sits on the board of trustees for Arkham Asylum, and while that grants him a few rights, it doesn’t actually give him unfettered access to the patients. He finally manages to convince enough people that he has developed an interest in amateur psychology and would like to try his hand at interviewing the Joker, and yes he does need to do it immediately. He attempts to give people the impression that he may be a little air-headed and arrogant, but he’s mostly harmless and is willing to grease the palms of anyone who can help him.

He arranges an interview with the Joker for the following morning, and spends the entire night in troubled dreams. He imagines that this is what heroin must feel like. The dreams make him incredibly happy while he has them, and when he wakes up the world is completely void of color. He has no appetite. Nothing else appeals to him, not even going out as Batman and patrolling Gotham, even though that has been the one thing to keep him going this past year. All he can think about while he’s awake is how soon he’ll get to sleep again, and once he’s asleep, he begins to dread the thought of waking up.

He wakes up two hours before his appointment with the Joker and takes a long shower, then shaves and dresses in a suit. Alfred has prepared poached eggs on toast despite his protests, and he reluctantly eats them in the dining room.

The desire to go back to sleep is being replaced by a growing excitement and nervousness about seeing the Joker. He hasn’t seen him in person since leaving him hanging by his foot off the side of a skyscraper. There was of course news coverage and a long and drawn-out trial as the Joker was charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder and kidnapping and whatever else the prosecutors could get to stick to him. Everyone wanted to bring him up on charges for something, and it didn’t help that the Joker refused to plead guilty to anything, despite being so obviously responsible. Had he gone to Blackgate Penitentiary, he would have been sentenced to death, but his attorney managed to convince everyone that he was insane and therefore not responsible for his actions. Bruce still felt a surge of rage at the very thought that the Joker didn’t know what he was doing, but there’s nothing he can do about that.

Bruce drives to the asylum and parks in the usual lot near the entrance of the administration building, where he usually comes to board meetings. He’s met at the door by Henry Wennet, the current director of the asylum.

“Good to see you again,” Wennet says, greeting him with a hand shake. Bruce pumps his hand enthusiastically.

“Thanks so much for helping me out here.” He gives Wennet a wide grin. “I’ve been interested in psychology for a while and I just wanted to start right at the top, you know?”

Wennet’s smile is a little thin. “I admit, we would normally never allow a, er, non-staff member to interview one of our patients, but you’ve been such a benefactor to this institution that I couldn’t say no.”

The large sum of money that Bruce had transferred into his personal account probably had something to do with it as well, but Bruce just grins. “Great! Let’s get started.”

Wennet leads him down a hallway. The building is old and it looks it, with narrow hallways and hardwood floors and many layers of paint on the walls.

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to search you,” Wennet says, preemptively wincing. “All visitors to the asylum go through the same procedure.”

“Not a problem,” Bruce says. He isn’t hiding anything. He just wants to see the Joker and get rid of this obsession so he can enjoy his dreams in peace.

“Good,” Wennet says in relief. They enter a room with a low bench and a metal detector. A guard waits for them there.

Bruce impatiently goes through the motions of the search, taking off his shoes and stepping through the metal detector and letting the guard quickly pat him down for weapons. He slides back into his shoes.

“You’ll have an hour,” Wennet says, leading him down another hall. “We have the room monitored on a camera so someone will be in there immediately if there’s any trouble, but I don’t expect any. I have to let you know that your interview will be recorded.”

“That’s no problem,” Bruce says, eager to get started.

They stop in front of a door with a window in it. Wennet nods towards the door. “Go in whenever you’re ready.”

Bruce looks in through the window. There is a table in the middle of the room with a bar running down the center of it. The Joker sits there, his hands cuffed to the bar, although he doesn’t appear to be too bothered by it. He wears the dark red Arkham uniform and his hair has been cut shorter than before, the green color nearly grown out.

Without makeup, he looks darker and colder, if that were possible. His eyes have shadows around them, making them look sunken. His lips are settled into an unamused line and the scars dig into his cheeks like a furrow in earth. His hair is dark. This is almost an entirely unfamiliar man and Bruce hesitates for a moment before he opens the door and steps inside.

The Joker’s eyes flick to him but he doesn’t raise his head or change his expression. Bruce lets the door swing shut and comes forward, pulling out the chair across from him. He sits down.

“Hello,” he says.

The Joker says nothing. Bruce finds himself staring. Maybe he should have waited in the hallway a little bit more and gotten over this unpleasant shock of unfamiliarity. He had prepared things to say but they have completely left his head.

“My name is Bruce Wayne,” he says finally, forcing himself into his Bruce persona. “I’m interested in learning a bit about you and talking about what happened last year.” He clears his throat uncomfortably. “You’ve served a year of your life sentence. Do you regret anything you did?”

The Joker is watching him with dark eyes, his gaze very intent, almost unnerving. He smiles slowly but still does not answer.

Bruce settles into the chair and takes a breath. He started this whole interview wrong. He is the one who is in control here. He may feel exposed here, but the Joker knows as little about him as he knows about the Joker. The Joker doesn’t need to help him out here, but honestly Bruce has already gotten what he wanted with this interview, which was just to face the Joker and reacquaint himself with the despicable reality of the man. There are no hidden feelings here. He is not attracted to this man at all.

In the brief reading he had done about psychopaths in case Wennet asked him any questions to gauge his interest, he had read that people often feel actual goosebumps when confronted with a psychopath. It is some deep, dark instinct telling them that they are prey and this is a predator. He suddenly understands that feeling completely. It is an entirely different thing to confront the Joker as Bruce Wayne.

“I know you don’t have any interest in answering my questions,” Bruce says carefully, watching the Joker. “Why should you? You’re not getting anything out of it, apart from a change from the routine. You might as well sit there in silence.”

He can’t tell what the Joker thinks of him. It’s like looking into a one-way mirror, unable to see inside but knowing that there’s someone here watching him. The Joker really doesn’t have a reason to talk to him. Bruce tries a different tact.

“I knew Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes. You murdered them both. They were good people.”

“Good people,” the Joker says finally, his voice very quiet. He doesn’t seem to blink at all. “You know how many men your Harvey Dent killed?”

“Harvey never killed anyone.”

The Joker gives a lazy shrug. “Oh, right, never mind. It was Batman.”

“You barely even knew who they were before you killed them. Harvey was going to make changes in this city. You didn’t need to kill them to do whatever it was you had to do.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Despite himself, Bruce is beginning to feel annoyed. The Joker is so calm, so mildly amused. It’s almost infuriating, but Bruce can handle it. He was never one to act impulsively.

“What kind of person does that sort of thing?” Bruce puts disgust into his voice. It isn’t hard. “What life choices led to that?”

The Joker is silent again. Bruce rests his elbows on the table and stares at him.

“How did you get those scars?”

The Joker leans forward as well, mirroring him as much as he can with his hands cuffed to the table. “Is this what you paid so much to do? You had them bring me in here so you could make small talk with a killer? Do you really want to figure me out or are you here to get a not-so-cheap thrill to tell at parties?”

“Figure you out?” Bruce lifts his lip in disgust. “I’ve already figured you out. Daddy touched you or Mommy beat you and now you think that everyone in the world is bad at heart, and all you want to do is show us the truth so we’ll stop being so hypocritical. You think you’re some sort of misunderstood genius who can show us our true faces and then laugh at us when we’re surprised. You like to think that murdering people and blowing up things is something new when really you’re just another pathetic freak in a prison full of the same.”

Something like irritation flickers behind the Joker’s eyes, but he keeps on smiling. The Joker sizes him up, his eyes running mercilessly over the suit.

“No, you’re right,” the Joker says slowly. “You’re absolutely right. I’m just some poor schmuck in prison with all the others. Your Harvey and your Rachel were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everyone is a saint deep down inside, including me, and I’ll get to show you what a saint I really am when the doctors decide I’m cured.”

“Cured,” Bruce snorts. “No one is going to give you a clean bill of health. There isn’t a person in this city you didn’t touch with your stunts, and that includes the doctors and the judges. You’re never seeing daylight again.”

The irritation is smoothed away from the Joker’s eyes, leaving him easy again. “Never seeing daylight again,” he echoes, smiling.

Bruce can tell he’s losing control of the conversation again. He casts about for something else to say. “It must infuriate you that the people on that boat refused to kill each other.

The Joker lifts his shoulders in a shrug. “You could repeat that experiment five hundred times and what happened that night would be the only exception.”

“I don’t know what gave you such a terrible view of the world, but you’re delusional,” Bruce replies. “Maybe you really do belong in here.”

“Maaaaaybe,” the Joker says, drawing out the word. “I wonder what the _honorable_ Bruce Wayne would do on the wrong end of a gun.” He licks the corner of his mouth.

Bruce glances at his mouth, recognizing the tic for a side-effect of the anti-psychotic medication he must be on. This is just a sick, crazy man. There is nothing in this man that is compelling or powerful or primal. Bruce feels no differently for him now than he did when he last saw the Joker. He hates the man, absolutely. He wants to beat the man to a pulp for what he did to Harvey and Rachel. But the courts ruled that the Joker was crazy and maybe they were right.

## 

He leaves the meeting with an overwhelming feeling of relief. Meeting with the Joker has reaffirmed his hatred of the man, and he is grateful for that. He’ll be the first to admit that the Joker has been in his thoughts recently; all of the changes in his life in the past year have been due to the Joker in one way or another, and being pursued by the police as Batman or rebuilding his house and knowing he won’t be retiring or trying to think of his future without Rachel in it are all things that make him think of the Joker and the damage he has wrought.

He drives back to the manor, replaying parts of the interview in his head. The day is gray and empty, the roads nearly bare of people. The leaden skies threaten snow. The streets that take him to the Palisades cut through a poor residential area of town, where the houses are detached three-family buildings and the yards are small squares of scraggly grass and dirty snow. Power lines overhead section the sky into long rectangles. A train trundles along the tracks by the water.

Alfred is waiting for him with a meal in the kitchen and won’t take no for an answer, but Bruce is hungry by now and he eats it eagerly. Thinking back on it, he believes that he has had the Joker stuck in his head for a while now and the man had become some sort of mythical monster there, but now that he’s met with him again face-to-face, he’s pretty sure he’s knocked that beast down into a man again, something that won’t trouble him anymore. Yes, the man made some terrible changes to Bruce’s life, but there is nothing to be gained by obsessing over it.

“Are you feeling better, sir?” Alfred asks him cautiously. Bruce gives him a warm smile.

“Much,” he says.


	3. Chapter 3

Bruce spends the day out of the house, first visiting Wayne Enterprises for a board meeting, then taking the sultry Ms. Selina Kyle out for dinner at a nice restaurant. She’s a lithe, attractive woman who seems to be very interested in him. The attention is flattering, but after dinner when she hints that she might be open to something more, he drops her off at her house instead. Under other circumstances he probably would have taken her home, but at the moment he can’t bear the thought of it.

He returns to the Manor by ten that evening and showers, then wanders into the library to find a book to read for a while. He barely makes it through two pages before he falls asleep.

 _She curls up in his lap, kissing his neck. “Do you love me?” she asks him._

 _“Of course,” he replies, taking her into his arms. When their lips meet, it’s a feeling of completeness. He feels whole._

 _They kiss lazily for a few minutes and then she slides off his lap to her knees, unzipping the front of his pants. He watches her, impossibly aroused, as she leans in, taking him out of his pants. A tongue licks up the underside of his cock and dark eyes rise to meet his and he knows those eyes. The Joker lowers his head and swallows him whole._

 _Bruce bucks up into the mouth and grits his teeth. This is so wrong, he knows it, but he can’t help this feeling. Every calm rationalization he had when he was awake is gone. Earlier today, driving home from the asylum, he absolutely was not attracted to the Joker, and now there is nothing more he wants to do in the entire world than fuck the Joker until they’re both too tired to move._

He is almost too exhausted with this whole ordeal to fight it, but he reluctantly drags himself out of the dream. It’s like tearing himself in half, but he does it, opening his eyes to look at the dim light of the library. The book has slid off his lap to the floor. He picks it up and closes it, then puts it on an end table. His cock is hard and angrily trying to get his attention, but he forces himself to ignore it. He is not going to jerk off when it was that man who brought it about in the first place.

He sits in the chair until it finally subsides, then goes to the bathroom down the hall and splashes some water on his face, feeling sickeningly disappointed. Half of it is because he went through all the trouble of meeting with the Joker and his plan didn’t work. Half of it is because he didn’t let the dream finish.

When he was at the asylum today, he felt a calm certainty. He knew where his place was in the world. He knew what was expected of him and how he was supposed to react. Now, sitting here in this disconcerting house, he can’t remember any of it. He almost wishes he were back there in that interview room, when things were black and white.

He dries his face on a towel and then steps out of the bathroom. The house is dark and quiet, although there’s a light down the hall. Perhaps Alfred is awake.

Bruce emerges at the top of the stairs in the foyer. There is a light on in the kitchen again. He descends the stairs and steps into the kitchen.

Alfred is at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and a book. He raises his head when Bruce comes in.

“I take it you can’t sleep either?” Alfred asks in greeting.

“Weird dreams,” Bruce replies shortly. The water in the kettle is still hot so he pours himself some tea as well and then sits down across from Alfred.

“Did you get what you wanted out of your interview today?” Alfred says.

Bruce frowns into his tea. “I’ve been having dreams about the Joker,” he says finally. If he told Alfred what kind of dream, the poor man would have a heart attack, but Alfred doesn’t need to know that part. “I’ve been sleeping poorly. I thought that going to see the Joker would get him out of my head, but it didn’t work.”

Alfred sips his tea. “Is it because of the house?”

Bruce stares at him blankly.

“The last time you lived here, Rachel was still alive,” Alfred points out. “She was a very frequent guest here when you were younger. You managed to come to terms with her death when you were living in the penthouse in the city, but now you’ve come back here where all your childhood memories are. And if you’re reminded of her, you’re going to be reminded of the man who killed her.”

Bruce nods. “That must be it. Maybe moving into this house was a mistake.”

“Or maybe it’s another step in the process,” Alfred says pragmatically. “You’ll heal in time, but don’t let bad dreams chase you out of your own home.”

Bruce sighs and sips his tea. The warmth feels good. “I can barely sleep.”

“You’ve been sleeping for days. Try to stay up for a while. Maybe you’ll get so tired you won’t dream anymore.”

They sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes longer, both of them finishing their tea. The house ticks and sighs around them, warping and settling as the cold outside combats with the heat inside. Finally Alfred pushes back his chair and stands.

“It isn’t healthy to keep on like this. You know she doesn’t have your best interests at heart.”

“I know,” Bruce says quietly. He gets to his feet as well. “I don’t think it matters. I love her.”

“Let it be known that I warned you.” Alfred takes both teacups and washes them in the sink, then sets them in the drainer. Bruce steps out into the foyer. He’d had a weight room set up in order to keep in shape as Batman. A hard workout may be just what he needs to keep himself awake.

Alfred starts up the steps to the second floor. Bruce crosses the foyer to the far doorway, then glances back over his shoulder, frowning.

“Wait, what did I just say?”

Nearly at the top of the stairs, Alfred looks over at him, a mirrored look of confusion on his face.

“I don’t know,” he says. With his next step, his foot slips.

Bruce starts to run for the stairs before he even knows what’s happening, but he was far away and Alfred is all the way at the top. Alfred’s arms windmill and then he slams down on his back and starts to roll down the stairs. Bruce makes it halfway up the steps and grabs for him, trying to stop him from falling further. He gets a grip on Alfred’s arm with one hand and the railing with the other and hangs on, pulling Alfred’s fall up short. Alfred comes to a stop.

One of his arms is twisted the wrong way and his face is slack. Bruce feels for a pulse and finds one, but there is a growing bruise on Alfred’s temple and cheek. He is unconscious.

“Alfred, wake up,” Bruce says desperately. He carefully checks Alfred’s neck and back for breaks before moving him to a more secure position on the stairs and running into the kitchen to phone the ambulance.

##

It’s snowing heavily when Bruce returns home from the hospital later that day. Alfred has a broken arm, a concussion, and some fractured vertebrae, the last of which concerns the doctors the most. They will be keeping him in the hospital for observation for at least a week and for now he’s been sedated to keep from moving. Bruce would have stayed at the hospital, but they’re predicting a blizzard and if he stays too late, he’ll never make it home.

It’s strange how even in such a large house, it always seemed more companionable when Alfred was there with him, even if he never saw Alfred at all. Now the house is completely empty and he can feel the difference.

Bruce shuts the front door behind himself and stands in the foyer, looking around. The day is growing dark and snow is spiraling down from the sky. Perhaps he should retreat to this bedroom, build a fire, and not come out until the storm is over.

He gathers a few candles from the pantry in case the electricity goes out, then makes himself a small supper in the kitchen and carries it upstairs to his bedroom. He sets it on the table by his favorite chair and puts the unlit candles on his bedside table. There’s a flat screen television discretely tucked into the wooden armoire. He flicks it on as he kneels down to start the fire.

The news is on. A ticker along the bottom of the screen is talking about the storm, fifteen to eighteen inches expected, please limit all unnecessary travel, roads expected to be slippery until late tomorrow. But the anchors aren’t talking about the weather at all.

“—After a guard was found murdered in the laundry room. The inmate, known only as the Joker, was responsible for several acts of terrorism in Gotham last year, when he murdered a number of city officials, including Police Commissioner Loeb and District Attorney Harvey Dent, and nearly detonated explosives in two ferries. If you see him, please do not attempt to approach or apprehend him. Call the police immediately. The Joker is considered extremely dangerous.”

On the screen behind the woman, the black and white video the Joker had made is playing without sound. Bruce finds himself staring at the screen at the blurry image of the man. He can mouth along with the words. _I’m a man of my word…_

He just saw the Joker this morning. The Joker had laughed when he said that he would never see daylight again. Had he been planning it then?

He rises slowly to his feet, the fire beginning to catch in the fireplace. He must have missed the whole news story because the reporter is currently interviewing people in the street about what they thought of the breakout, which means that there isn’t any news at all. He mutes the television and sits down in his chair. His food is growing cold but he is suddenly not hungry.

Batman will need to go out tonight, despite the storm. He needs to stop the Joker before he does something drastic. Maybe this is exactly what he’s been waiting for. Violence is exactly what he needs.

He closes the glass panels in front of the fireplace to leave it to burn itself out and shuts off the television, then leaves the library and strides down the hall to the foyer. They had had a more trustworthy elevator put in down to the foundations than the one that had been down there before. It’s accessible in a locked room off the servant’s quarters.

Hurrying down the stairs to the first floor, Bruce almost misses the whiff of air that trails up the stairs. It carries with it the scent of snow. He comes to a stop on the stairs.

The front door is shut, just as he left it. The alarm system is engaged, and it should alert him if there is anything open. But that cold breeze was most definitely from an open door or window. There’s someone in the house.

Quieter now, Bruce continues down to the first floor. If he can get to the elevator, he can have access to all of his weapons, but if he doesn’t make it that far, there are always knives in the kitchen.

He slowly scans the room, then sidles up to the door of the kitchen and peers inside. Nothing seems out of place. There are no more breezes. He steps into the room and glances around, then goes for the silverware drawer.

“It’s a lot of house for one man,” says a voice behind him. Bruce keeps going for the silverware drawer without stopping and he hears someone take two quick steps behind him. He turns, blocking the Joker’s swing with his forearm, and the two of them slam into the counter.

The Joker has found makeup and a suit somewhere. His eyes are bright and animated, far from how they were this morning in the interview room. He’s holding a serrated knife in his hand but for the moment Bruce has a hold of his wrist.

“Didn’t expect to find you all by your lonesome.”

“What are you doing here?” Bruce says, narrowly stopping himself from using Batman’s growl.

“I didn’t feel as if you got everything out of our, ah, conversation this morning,” the Joker says. His knee jams into Bruce’s thigh and he yanks his wrist free, taking a step back.

Bruce waits, one of his hands on the handle for the silverware drawer. The Joker’s too close for him to open it and get a knife out in time. It’s different, fighting as Bruce Wayne. He has no armor, for one. He’ll have to make sure to compensate for that.

“If you had something to add, you could have called,” Bruce says warily. The Joker couldn’t possibly know that he’s Batman, could he?

“I thought this was a message I had to deliver in person,” the Joker says, smiling, and then he lunges forward with the knife.

Bruce spins out of the way, grabbing a blender from the counter and shoving it at the Joker as a distraction as he swings around the counter. There’s a frying pan in the sink, waiting to be washed. He grabs it by the handle and swings at the Joker, slamming it into the Joker’s wrist. The knife goes flying but the Joker reaches into his pocket for another one.

Bruce presses his advantage, swinging the frying pan again. He slams the Joker into the counter, grabbing for the knife that he’s trying to pull out of his pocket. The Joker jerks his head forward, his forehead catching Bruce’s chin. Bruce’s fingers slip off the knife. The Joker yanks it out of his pocket and flips it open. Bruce takes hold of his face in both hands and kisses him.

There is no transition between the fight and the kiss. The Joker jolts underneath him, startled, but then the surprise disappears like someone flipped a switch and the Joker is kissing him back, the knife forgotten in his hand.

It’s messy and wet and somehow is the best kiss Bruce has ever had. He can feel the makeup smearing under his hands but he doesn’t care. He molds his body against the Joker’s, the two of them fitting together in a way that he never did with any woman, hip to hip and thigh to thigh and rib to rib.

The reality of the situation suddenly hits Bruce and he shoves the Joker away. The Joker stares at him, glassy-eyed, still stuck in whatever obscene force is holding them. Bruce disarms him, flinging the knife away, and then between one breath and the next the Joker turns and runs.

Bruce gives him a moment’s head start, trying to force himself not to follow. There is no _reason_ to follow. He needs to get his weapons. He shouldn’t feel this nearly overwhelming need to follow the Joker and finish what he started. What is wrong with him? It’s like he’s a puppet, being controlled by someone else.

Fuck it. He runs after the Joker.

##

Bruce knows this house better than anyone else except perhaps Alfred, which gives him a crippling disadvantage in this chase. He knows what should be here, so when it’s out of place, like a door missing where there used to be one, or furniture in the wrong spot, it shocks him. The Joker, who has never been here, seems to step through the shadows without a sound.

Bruce has never known the man to be quiet. He shouldn’t be unobtrusive. He’s dressed as a clown. He seems to crave attention, showing his face on security cameras and constructing flashy crimes. Yet he is a silent, calculating man as well, Bruce now realizes. He is nameless and faceless. He is a planner, as much as he says he isn’t. Or more than that, he is a _manipulator_ , pushing people to do what he wants by diverting their attention elsewhere.

Bruce stalks down a hallway, listening. The house is mostly quiet, although it’s creaking and popping as it settles in the cold. The heat comes on in the wing and the walls groan in protest and behind that, Bruce hears a sound, a shuffling step, almost too quiet to hear. He turns.

The Joker is in the doorway to the ballroom, watching him, but it’s not the Joker anymore. It’s someone else looking out through those eyes. Bruce feels a shocked jolt and then something awakens in him again, like he felt before, and his consciousness is pushed to the side. He feels something slip into his body like it’s wearing a glove.

“You came back,” he says with overwhelming relief.

“I couldn’t stay away,” the Joker says. There is something about his speech patterns that tells Bruce that it isn’t the Joker speaking.

Bruce moves forward to the doorway where the Joker is standing, his hands reaching out. He grabs the Joker’s shoulder and kisses him again like they kissed in the kitchen, bodies pressing together. The Joker is solid and real against him, his chest rising and falling with his breath, his arms strong as he wraps them around Bruce, holding him tightly.

He’s already aroused, almost impossibly so. The Joker rubs his hand along the front of Bruce’s pants, his knuckles running along Bruce’s erection, and Bruce groans, pushing against his hand. The Joker’s finds the button on his pants and yanks it open, then unzips him and slides his hands inside, his fingers wrapping around Bruce’s cock. Bruce presses his forehead into the crook of the Joker’s neck and bucks his hips into the Joker’s hand.

His own hands slide down the Joker’s body to his waist, fumbling along the waistband. He doesn’t bother trying to be gentle. He yanks open the front of his pants, popping off the button and shoving his hand inside. The Joker is hard as well, his cock fitting nicely into Bruce’s palm. Bruce rubs his thumb over the head of the cock and the Joker shudders, his teeth digging into his lower lip.

Bruce’s whole body is buzzing with the need to bury himself in the Joker. He presses his mouth to the Joker’s, not caring about the paint that smears off on his own lips, and shoves the Joker against the door frame so hard that the Joker’s head bounces off the wood. He yanks the Joker’s pants down to his knees.

The Joker’s tongue runs along Bruce’s lip and then he drops down to his knees, grabbing Bruce’s hips. Hot breath gusts over Bruce’s cock and then the Joker swallows him whole, his mouth closing around Bruce’s cock. A tongue runs up the underside and Bruce bites down on his lower lip hard to keep himself from coming too soon. Somewhere inside of him, a small part of him is reeling in confusion, but he is too far gone to care.

He cups his hand on the back of the Joker’s head, tugging him away with a grip on his hair. The Joker looks up at him and Bruce slides down the wall to sit next to him, kissing him. The Joker’s eyes are dark and unknowable, but Bruce feels like he recognizes something inside of them.

He pulls the Joker’s pants down the rest of the way and the Joker helps him, kicking them off his feet. The Joker swings a leg over Bruce’s thighs, straddling him, and a voice in Bruce’s head is saying “Holy shit, holy shit” over and over again, because he can’t quite believe this is happening. Maybe it’s a dream. Maybe he fell asleep in the library and this is just another dream like all the rest. The Joker’s cock slides against his own and all thought flees.

The Joker braces himself on one hand and lifts his hips. Bruce pushes his hand in between the Joker’s legs, his fingers blindly exploring. He has had anal sex before with women, but only rarely and not in a while. His fingers find the tight pucker of muscle and he pushes gently, feeling the muscle give slightly to allow him access.

The Joker’s hand joins his, more impatient than Bruce. His fingers sink in to the knuckles. Bruce takes his cue, his fingers entwining with the Joker’s and helping stretch him open. The Joker makes an open-mouthed sound that Bruce can’t translate but it sounds like a good thing.

There is no sound in the dark ballroom except for their harsh breathing. The only light is from a lamp somewhere down the hall, which illuminates them in faint burnished gold. Faintly, Bruce can hear the howling of the window outside and knows that the blizzard is starting in earnest, snowing them in.

But these are all distant things compared to the immediacy of the Joker’s weight on his thighs, the heat of the Joker’s flesh against him, and the nearly overwhelming pleasure as the Joker withdraws his fingers from himself and wraps them around Bruce’s cock, pulling him in a long, slow stroke. Bruce hears himself groaning and he drags the Joker’s thighs further apart, bucking up. The Joker wraps an ankle around behind Bruce’s back and then lowers himself down, guiding Bruce to the right spot. Bruce’s cock presses hard against the Joker before pushing inside.

It’s a slow slide, eased only by the slickness of the Joker’s saliva on his cock, which is only barely enough. The Joker is so tight around him, muscles clenching and releasing as he sinks all the way down onto Bruce. The small voice in Bruce’s head is angrily reminding him that he’s not wearing a condom and he has no idea what kind of diseases the Joker might have, but another voice, that unfamiliar presence that seems to be controlling Bruce’s actions, argues that wearing a condom would be an unbearable separation between the two of them. Both voices go silent when the Joker comes to a rest on Bruce’s lap, his trembling thighs tight around Bruce’s hips, every inch of Bruce deep inside him. The two of them are gasping, staring at each other. The Joker shakes sweaty hair back from his face and then tips his head forward, his forehead pressing against Bruce’s.

It feels so incredibly right to be here like this, holding the Joker so tightly, buried so deep inside him that it’s like being one person. Bruce slides one hand up to the back of the Joker’s neck and kisses him harshly, melding their mouths together. The Joker’s breath is hot and quick and his tongue slides against Bruce’s. His fingers tighten on Bruce’s waist and then he lifts himself up a few inches and sinks back down on top of Bruce. Bruce groans, bucking his hips up a little to meet him. The Joker kisses the corner of Bruce’s mouth and then his cheek slides against Bruce’s. He buries his face in the crook of Bruce’s neck and lifts himself up again.

They move together slowly, Bruce rocking up into the Joker as the Joker eases himself up and down. The sensations are so overwhelming that Bruce finds himself holding his breath, afraid to miss a second of it. The sound of the Joker’s gasps in his ear is so incredibly erotic that he thinks he could get off on that alone. He hooks his hands under both of the Joker’s thighs, hitching him closer, and the Joker’s hips stutter against his. He brings himself down a little faster, a little rougher. Bruce bites his lip and jerks up into the Joker but he can’t quite get the leverage he needs.

Holding the Joker tightly, Bruce shifts his weight forward and lets the Joker down onto his back on the floor. He hooks both of his hands under the Joker’s thighs and lifts him as he drills forward, sliding firmly into him. The Joker’s back arches and he locks his ankles behind Bruce’s back, his mouth opening.

Bruce braces his hands and knees on the floor and starts to ram forward, his breath hitching with each thrust. The Joker’s body rocks with the force of it. The Joker’s fingers dig furrows into Bruce’s hips. He is saying something over and over and it could be “Please, please, please.”

Bruce gives it to him, fucking him roughly into the floor. He feels the Joker start to clench around him, losing the rhythm, no longer making coherent words. Wetness bursts against Bruce’s stomach as the Joker comes. Bruce doesn’t stop, burying himself in the Joker again and again as the Joker’s body rocks helplessly underneath him. When he finally starts to come, he whispers “I love you,” against the Joker’s neck, his hips stuttering against the Joker. The Joker keeps holding him tightly, catching his breath, as Bruce pulses into him.

Then they lie there in gasping silence. Bruce finds himself rubbing his hand over and over against the Joker’s thigh. His eyes are wet. He feels exhausted, filled with a sweet, sleepy lassitude. He closes his eyes.

The Joker suddenly goes rigid underneath him. Bruce’s eyes fly open as reason floods back into him. The Joker kicks at him, attempting to scramble out from underneath him. Bruce sits up, grimacing as he disengages from the Joker. The Joker’s eyes are wide, the first startled look that Bruce has ever seen on his face, and he squirms away from Bruce, looking around for his pants. Bruce turns to look for them as well, feeling a stupid urge to help him out, and then the lights go out.

The electricity in the whole building is out, Bruce realizes. The distant sound of the furnace stops. They are in pitch blackness. Bruce hears the scrape of metal and realizes that the Joker is still armed. He scrambles backwards, yanking up his own pants. He hurriedly gets to his feet and goes for the door.

He finds the door frame and steps through into the hall, keeping his hand on the wall. Behind him, he hears the Joker moving. Bruce forces himself to move as quietly as he can, even if that means going a little slower than he would like.

His body feels numb. What the fuck just happened? Did he just fuck the Joker? Did he just _rape_ the Joker? Did the Joker rape _him_? Was there some sort of—of poison or drug in the air? What could have made him do what he did?

Bruce has always been one to take full responsibility for his actions, but he can’t for the life of him explain what just happened. He was completely and utterly taken over by some alien urge, and it looks like the Joker was too. Did they both fall victim to some sort of outside force? That’s impossible.

He passes a window at the end of the hall and can only barely make out the howling maelstrom outside. The snow already looks to be four or five inches deep and it’s falling fast.

Footsteps pound the floor behind him and he realizes that he must be barely visible in the faint light from the window. He breaks into a run, taking a left at the end of the hall and bursting into the music room. He runs past the piano and couches and ducks through the next doorway into the dining room. His thigh slams the corner of a sideboard and he lets out an explosive swear, rubbing his throbbing leg as he hurries down past the dining room table and into the kitchen.

Thunder rumbles in the distance and the wind picks up. The hall to the servants quarters is at the end of the room. He pours on the speed, running his hand along the kitchen counter to find his way. When the lightning flashes to reveal the woman standing in front of him, he doesn’t have time to slow down. He collides with her and the thunder cracks so loud around them that the house shakes. Darkness slams down around them and he feels teeth graze over his earlobe.

“You won’t leave me,” she whispers and then she’s gone completely as if she was never standing there. Bruce recoils, windmilling backwards. The pitch blackness yawns in front of him, horrifyingly black.

Pure animal panic floods his body. He turns and sprints for the other door, leading back to the foyer. He bursts into the foyer and reaches the front door, throwing the lock back and yanking the door open. The alarm system doesn’t even chirp, completely dead.

Wind howls into the foyer and snow as sharp as needles slices across his face. Something is coming up the outside steps, the wind whipping her hair, her face black with blood, and he slams the door shut again, his body so rigid with terror that he can barely fumble the lock back into place.

“You won’t leave me,” says the Joker behind him. Bruce whirls around. The Joker is standing five feet away from him, looking up at Bruce through a curtain of tangled hair. He is holding a knife in his hand but only as an afterthought, as if he forgot it was there. Bruce can tell that the Joker is gone again and something has taken his place. The woman is looking at him out of the Joker’s eyes.

“I’d never leave you,” Bruce says, and behind his heart-pounding fear he feels a surge of sickening love.

“Then why did you run?” A bitter smile stretches the Joker’s lips.

Bruce takes a breath. Something scratches the door behind him, almost too faint to hear, like someone’s fingernails scraping over the paint. His heart leaps in his throat but he can’t move.

“You’re scaring me.”

A look almost like concern crosses the Joker’s face. “Scaring you?”

Someone else speaks from Bruce’s mouth. “I know my neighbor didn’t kill herself.”

Something flickers in the Joker’s eyes. “No?”

“Was it because she flirted with me? Is that why you did it?” Bruce asks cautiously. The Joker seems to hesitate.

“She wanted to take you from me.”

“Is that why you pushed my mother down the stairs? Because she warned me about you?”

The Joker says nothing. Bruce takes a slow step forward.

“I don’t care what anyone says. I would never leave you,” he says quietly, watching the Joker for any sign of violence. The Joker does nothing, letting him approach.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” Bruce confesses. “I think I’m obsessed with you. I would die without you. It scares me when you hurt other people because they could take you away from me.”

The Joker draws in a slow breath, his eyes wide in guarded hope. Bruce reaches him and caresses his cheek, kissing him gently. The Joker opens his mouth to Bruce and it starts to turn more desperate. Bruce feels the powerful desire rising in him again.

He can’t do this. He has to stop this before it happens again. Bruce gathers up all his will and forces himself away, his body stumbling backwards drunkenly. It’s almost painful to move away from the Joker but he continues to back towards the door. Something bangs on the door and that breaks the spell. He turns and starts for the door on the other side of the foyer, feeling as if he’s moving through quicksand. The Joker makes a false start towards him but stops, as if he’s fighting the compulsion as well.

When Bruce gets a few feet away, it gets easier and then he runs.


	4. Chapter 4

There is something seriously wrong in this house, and Bruce doesn’t know what to think about it. To say that this house seems haunted feels like giving in to madness, but there is no other explanation for it. He doesn’t think there is any drug in the world that could make him and the Joker act out scenes from some unknown story. Is it a shared hallucination? Mass delusion?

Whatever it is, it is obvious that this delusion is getting dangerous. Even on his saner days, the Joker is dangerous; it’s clear that he came to this house to kill Bruce. However, in this shared delusion they seem to have, the Joker is playing the part of the psychotic girlfriend. If these truly are the ghosts of two doomed lovers—and Bruce is struggling against this idea with all of his might—then he is pretty sure he knows how this story ends.

But how could it be ghosts? Even assuming their existence, this house is brand new. What could they be haunting? The only thing in this house that isn’t new is a lot of the furniture, which has come from estate sales. Of course, it’s not like he can go around exorcising every chair and wardrobe in the whole manor.

He needs to get out of this house. The storm will be terrible. He’ll need to get a coat from his bedroom upstairs and then he can try to make it to the garages. The Tumbler was destroyed back in his last confrontation with the Joker but he has other cars that might be able to make it through the snow. He could go out without a coat but that could be suicide if the car breaks down or gets stuck in a snowbank, and the weather out there is so bad that he can probably depend on that happening.

Alternately, he could go out to the bat cave and get his suit, but the memory of the woman in the kitchen fills him with dread. In any case, there’s no way to be sure that he wouldn’t just take off the armor if he gets caught in that delusion again. It would also tell the Joker who he really was. Going up against the Joker would most likely be a bad idea at this point. The best thing to do is get the heck out of here.

Bruce creeps along the downstairs hallway. He’s at the end of the house by the weight room and pool. It’s the opposite wing from his bedroom. Listening as hard as he can, Bruce moves forward. There’s a staircase up ahead that he can use to get to the second floor.

He reaches the spot where the wall ends at the foot of the stairs and stops, listening again. He has no idea where the Joker is. He could be hunting Bruce. He could have fled into the other wing. He could have even left the house, although at that thought Bruce feels a surge of fear for the Joker’s well-being in the storm, and then, following close on the heels of that, a tremor of alarm. That wasn’t his own thought that he just had. The ghost, or whatever it is, must still be with him, buried down inside him.

He starts up the steps, keeping to the edges of each step to avoid creaks. It is still pitch black in here, except for distant flashes of lightning, and he is only getting along by feel. At the top of the steps, he hesitates again, holding his breath. No one seems to be in the upstairs hallway.

The hallway seems endless. With the lights off, his house seems even bigger than it normally is. It shouldn’t take him this long to get back to the foyer. Or should it? He’s never done this in the dark before, and certainly not an inch at a time, listening for sounds.

Somewhere ahead of him, closer than he expected, he hears a door slam open. It sounds like the front door of the house down on the first floor. Bruce freezes. A cold gust of wind stirs against his cheek.

 _I must not have closed it tightly,_ he tells himself. _The woman outside was just a delusion. No one is getting into the house. Maybe the Joker opened the door. Maybe he’s fleeing into the storm._ Bruce takes a breath and continues forward.

He reaches the doorway leading into the foyer and peers around the corner. Down at the foot of the stairs he can see the front door hanging open. Snow is already starting to pile up on the floor. There are footsteps in the snow. Bruce feels himself relax in relief. The Joker has gone outside. He’ll be able to get to his bedroom and get his coat and call the police without interference.

Bruce steps carefully across the top landing of the stairs, heading for the opposite doorway and the hall leading to his bedroom. He moves as quickly as he can. Halfway across, he darts a glance down at the doorway again to see if he can see the Joker, and his blood freezes in his veins.

The footprints are coming _into_ the house.

Bruce reaches the other doorway and sprints down the hall to his room, his hands out in front of him to keep him from colliding with anything. If he runs into that woman again, he’s going to plow her down and keep running. He reaches the door to his bedroom and slips inside, shutting the door behind himself. He fumbles across the room to the bedside table and finds the candle where he had left it. Lighting it, he sets it on the bedside table and then hurries for the wardrobe to get his coat.

“You’re angry with me, aren’t you?” the Joker asks quietly from the dark corner of the room. Bruce suppresses a flinch and whirls around. For a second he thinks he sees the woman, but then it’s just the Joker beside the door, where he must have been waiting. He hair is hanging in his eyes and his makeup is smeared. He’s holding a knife again, rubbing his thumb down the flat of the blade, his eyes lowered.

“No,” Bruce says with a rush of guilt and compassion. “No, of course not. I can’t be mad with you.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I just wanted to be with you,” the Joker says, his eyes raising from the knife. Bruce struggles not to approach him, but his body is outside of his control again. The best he can do is slow himself down. It must look strange from an outside perspective, Bruce moving as if in slow motion, but the Joker seems to have no reaction to it. He’s still playing with the knife, which is making Bruce nervous.

“I’m never going to leave you,” Bruce says. He reaches out and takes the Joker’s wrists, then slides his hands slowly up the Joker’s arms before gripping his shoulders. He leans in for a gentle kiss, ignoring the knife pressed against his stomach. The Joker responds to the kiss, his eyes half-lidded. Bruce can feel the Joker’s arousal against his thigh. His own cock is waking up. He mentally curses it, but it’s like the dreams he’s been having. He just can’t help it.

The Joker slides the knife into his pocket and Bruce relaxes slightly. If he waits for the right moment, he can put all of his power into going for that knife, and he might be able to disarm the Joker before whatever power is possessing him stops him.

The kiss is long and lingering. Unlike the frantic passion of earlier, Bruce feels content to take it slow now. He feels a confused mishmash of feelings; the dread and wary patience, waiting for his moment to strike; the deep desire to claim the Joker again; a creeping sorrow and guilt. He can’t figure out the last one, but perhaps even this ghost knows that a relationship with someone so unstable can never last.

“I don’t think I can ever love anyone else as much as I love you,” Bruce whispers against the Joker’s lips. He kisses the Joker’s cheek, then his earlobe, and then takes the lapel of the Joker’s jacket and tugs it off his shoulders. He slowly circles the Joker, pulling the jacket down his arms and kissing the back of his neck. He sees the Joker shiver. He pulls the jacket down to the Joker’s elbows and then presses himself against the Joker’s back, using the jacket to pin the Joker’s arms at his sides.

“Do you trust me?” Bruce asks.

The Joker sucks in a breath as if he’s going to say something, but all that comes out is “Yes.” Bruce kisses his neck again and then pulls the jacket off all the way, tossing it into the corner of the room. Bruce hears the knife clatter as it hits the floor, still in the pocket of the jacket. He feels a surge of relief. Apparently the ghost felt just as nervous about that knife as he did. Still, he’s not out of danger yet.

The Joker starts to turn and Bruce grabs his shoulders, holding him in place. He kisses the place where the Joker’s jaw meets his ear and one of his hands slides down to the front of the Joker’s pants. The pants are torn at the button from earlier and are easy to push down. The Joker is fully erect. Bruce takes a hold of him and rubs his thumb gently over the tip, his other hand closing over the Joker’s pants pocket, where another knife lies waiting. He deftly pulls out the knife and tosses it away.

He pumps his fist up and down the Joker’s cock, slowly and firmly, his other hand unzipping his own pants. The Joker tips back his head, resting it on Bruce’s shoulder. Bruce sees him swallow, his Adam’s apple moving. Bruce lifts himself free of his pants and rubs against the cleft of the Joker’s buttocks, feeling a quiver of need in his stomach. It can’t be more than half an hour since the ballroom. He feels like it’s been years.

The Joker pushes back against Bruce, reaching one hand back to grip Bruce’s thigh, trapping Bruce’s cock between their bodies. Bruce tightens his arm around the Joker’s stomach and then pushes him forward against the end of the bed. The Joker catches himself before Bruce can push him onto his stomach. He reaches back to Bruce, tugging him closer. Bruce fumbles, holding the Joker’s hips and guiding himself to the right spot. It doesn’t take any preparation this time before he’s sliding in. He sees the Joker’s lips part in a silent gasp. Bruce takes a shaky moment to adjust to the sudden tight sensation.

“Are you okay?” he gasps. The Joker nods jerkily. Bruce carefully pulls out, almost all the way, and then pushes forward again.

It’s different this way, with the Joker’s back to him. It’s somehow more obscene, now that he can watch himself disappear into the Joker. The Joker’s thighs are against the bed and he is propping himself up with one hand, his other one still back, holding Bruce’s hip. Bruce licks his lips, trying not to groan out loud when he pushes all the way in.

He works himself in and out for a moment, marveling at the intense sensation and the way that the Joker’s lower back clenches with each thrust. The Joker is panting open-mouthed, his cock jutting out and weeping with pre-cum. Bruce has been with many women but it is always powerful to see someone come apart so completely by something you do. He begins to move a little faster, jerking his hips forward. The bed creaks, the post tapping the wall.

The Joker drops down to his elbow, parting his thighs a little further. Bruce holds the Joker’s hips in both hands, knowing that his fingers are probably leaving bruises but not caring. He needs this. None of the dreams these past few days could even come close to this. He wants this to last forever.

He pulls out and the Joker makes a startled noise. Bruce grabs his arm and tugs.

“Turn over, turn over,” he gasps. “I need to see you. I need to face you.”

The Joker turns around, flopping onto his back and propping himself up with his elbows, his thighs sprawling open. Bruce braces one knee on the bed and pushes inside the Joker in one smooth thrust. They both let out a sound at the suddenness of it. Bruce crawls up and presses his mouth against the Joker’s before he starts to move again, pushing deep into him. The Joker’s erection presses against Bruce’s stomach.

They rock together on the bed. Bruce keeps one hand behind the Joker’s knee, pressing his thigh up and to his chest. The Joker’s other leg hooks around Bruce’s back, flexing a little as he lifts himself up to meet Bruce. Despite the coldness of the room, their bodies are sweaty, slippery where they touch. Bruce presses his forehead against the Joker’s and stares into his eyes until the Joker closes them.

“No, I want to see you,” Bruce says, kissing him again. “I want to see you come.”

He takes ahold of the Joker’s erection again, stroking it. The Joker pushes up against him, his eyes still shut.

“Open your eyes,” Bruce whispers, his hand stopping on the Joker’s cock. The Joker reluctantly opens his eyes and Bruce rewards him by bringing his hand up with a twist. He thrusts inside of him and hears the Joker make a choked-off sound of need. It is the most erotic sound Bruce has ever heard and he almost loses it then, slamming into the Joker twice more in quick succession.

The Joker urges him on, one of his hands closing over Bruce’s. Bruce tightens his hand on the Joker’s cock and jacks him roughly. The Joker bucks underneath him, desperate, and Bruce feels the second the Joker starts to come, clenching on Bruce and erupting messily into Bruce’s hand. Bruce drives himself into the Joker mercilessly, watching his whole body shudder with the aftershocks. The Joker’s eyes are squeezed shut again but Bruce doesn’t care anymore.

Bruce only makes it another ten seconds before he starts to come, his breath catching in his throat. All thought leaves his head. There is nothing outside of him and the Joker. He feels, for the first time in a long time, complete.

He collapses on top of the Joker, kissing blindly at his neck. This time reality doesn’t seem to be coming back, and the Joker seems content to lay where he is. Bruce takes in a slow breath and brushes the Joker’s hair from his face. He plants a gentle kiss on the Joker’s mouth, his other hand sliding up and under the pillow at the head of the bed. His fingers close over the gun.

Bruce knows that there is no gun under his pillow, and he would never personally touch a gun, but it is real and solid in his hand. The guilt and sorrow come back and Bruce kisses the Joker again, pulling the gun out from under the pillow. He brings it to the Joker’s head.

All this time, he’d thought that it was the Joker who was the violent one. He’d thought it was the Joker’s ghost who had killed them both, and he had completely disregarded himself. How _stupid._

The Joker’s eyes snap open the second the barrel touches his temple and with reflexes that Bruce could never hope to have, he smashes Bruce’s wrist away. The gun goes off, a bullet burying itself in the mattress. The Joker struggles out from under Bruce, shoving him away. Bruce rolls off the edge of the bed, lands on his feet, and launches himself back onto it, catching the Joker with an arm around his waist. The Joker’s elbow hits Bruce in the face. Bruce forces him down onto the bed face-down, pressing the gun to the back of his head.

“It’s the only way,” Bruce says desperately. “You know it is. I’ll be right behind you.”

The Joker drives his foot back into Bruce’s knee, knocking Bruce off balance enough to twist out from underneath him again. The Joker rolls off the bed, keeping low and adjusting his clothing. Bruce hauls up his pants to stop them from hobbling him. The Joker is going for his jacket in the corner with the knives in it. Bruce circles the bed at a sprint and the Joker sweeps out a leg to trip him. Bruce dodges it but not the coat that the Joker flings into his face. Bruce bats it away and the Joker comes at him with a knife.

Bruce scrambles backwards. He doesn’t want to kill the Joker in self defense; he wants it to be more meaningful than that. No, wait, he doesn’t want to kill him at all. He needs to focus on that thought.

The Joker lunges at him. Bruce manages to force the Joker’s knife away enough that it just bites into his side, tearing through his shirt. He grabs the Joker’s arm and slams him into the headboard of the bed with all of his strength. The headboard breaks in two with a loud crack and collapses. In the freshly revealed wood of the bedpost, Bruce can see two small bullet holes that must be decades old.

“Stay still,” Bruce snarls, pushing the gun into the Joker’s face. The Joker’s eyes widen and Bruce belatedly realizes that he just used his Batman voice. The Joker lashes out with his foot, hitting the bedside table. It wobbles and the candle tips forward, falling onto the sheets.

Bruce rolls away off the bed as the sheets catch fire. The Joker bounds off the bed and comes after him. The two of them crash into the wardrobe and the knife slices into Bruce’s forearm before Bruce bats it away. The Joker’s mouth closes forcefully over Bruce’s and Bruce kisses back.

The momentum of the fight seems to drain away. The Joker keeps kissing him as the bed burns. The fire bathes the room in incredible heat. The flames lick the ceiling and Bruce can’t bring himself to care.

When the gun flickers out of existence in his hand, he knows that the ghosts are gone. The Joker’s mouth is soft. His tongue darts against Bruce’s teeth. Bruce closes his eyes for a second, feeling the whole length of the Joker’s body pressed against him.

One of the bedposts collapses and the Joker pulls back. Bruce stares at him, feeling suddenly lost.

“Maybe another time, Bats,” the Joker says, his voice rough. He steps back and then goes for the door. Bruce lets him go.

##

The fire department manages to save the house, although the bedroom and the rooms on either side of it are a lost cause. Bruce sits in the ambulance outside as the paramedics bandage the cuts in his side and arm.

The police have combed the grounds but there is no sign of the Joker. There are tire tracks in the snow in the driveway where a car had been parked, most likely the means by which the Joker arrived. The police want to put a protective detail on the house but Bruce refuses. He doesn’t think the Joker is coming back.

The storm is dying down, leaving the grounds covered in deep snow. Bruce agrees to have them drop him at a hotel for the night, where he’ll have actual heat and a bed to sleep in.

He’s exhausted, but his mind feels clear for the first time in a week. He feels more like himself than he’s been in a while. Maybe, after a good night’s sleep, he’ll be able to face the day tomorrow.

He hopes he doesn’t dream.


End file.
